Redefining Curatorial Leadership and Activating Community Expertise to Build Equitable and Inclusive Art Museums

Abstract Leadership in art museums is a changing construct: historically, these institutions were established as hierarchical, top‐down structures that prioritized sole expertise to dictate success. Today, are searching for ways become more responsive, collaborative, and multivocal value community voices expertise. A growing variety of museum professionals ask how better reflect integrate local communities within their museums. We share reflections, insights, lessons learned from multi‐year case study at the Tucson Museum Art Historic Block (TMA), which focuses on redefining curatorial leadership community‐based collaborative expand approaches exhibition development interpretation. The authors this article highlight network governance/collaborative can be applied practice develop exhibitions rooted stewardship, multivocality, approaches. Here, defined way influences its vice versa. In addition, we discuss strategies building multi‐directional initiatives shape equitable inclusive museum.